Root signifiers of photography...

[daniel_ob]

Robert X

 

1. 'To argue, as you continue to do, that people using digital cameras are not doing photography, to me seems like straight out of a conversation from Alice in Wonderland.'

 

2. 'Many artists use traditional methods, and many use cutting edge.'

 

-----

This is answer to you:

 

1. To argue, as you continue to do, that people using digital cameras are doing photography, to me seems like straight out of a conversation from Alice in Wonderland.

 

2. What is traditional and what is cutting edge, and why you think that way, and what at all it does with photography.

 

So make your own definition or definition you learned from other responsible for the same to avoid this funny kind of talking as above. That do not gets us anywhere. I can change my mind if you show me that I am not right. But please do not use computers, streetcars, Alice,... Use photography. Make that freaken definition away form I think you wrong, I think it is not correct,....

[Spearhead]

The good news is that digital photography is accepted as photography by a) museums, b) artists, c) galleries, d) critics, e) photographers. It's only a handful of people here on photo.net that don't accept it.

[beauh44]

Imagine if someone's brand new Canon 1Ds Mark II took a photograph <a href="http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/P15/">that was this "soft"!</a><P>

 

Well, apparently that photograph recently sold for $2.9 million dollars and currently holds the Guiness World Record for the most ever paid for a photograph.<P>

 

Maybe I *should* go back to film. (If that's what was used) ;-)

[beauh44]

Sorry... There's a bigger shot of the same photo at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4715106.stm Be sure to click on "Enlarge".

[daniel_ob]

'The good news is that digital photography is accepted as photography by a) museums, b) artists, c) galleries, d) critics, e) photographers. It's only a handful of people here on photo.net that don't accept it.'

 

Uh I did not know that we today have so many artists. Thank you Jeff. How just advanced we are. Aaaaah that museums use digital, for what reason. I think your reason is the same. How come you forgot science.

[daniel_ob]

Hooker

 

I know that photograph. It is digital platinum print. But, you know sensors of old time. Well nothing is perfect.

[ellis_vener_photography]

Pico. I should have written more carefully. You pulled out a very narrow example and

busted me. thank you for the correction. That is the glory of logic. And also of the

scientific method.

 

So to restate: Any photograph not made by an automatic machine and where the camera is

directly operated by a sentient being making judgement calls as to where to point the

camera and when to make the exposure is a statement of an opinion.

 

But to the larger issue: you are correct: a photograph by itself is neither an opinion or a

fact, it is quite simply: a photograph.

[karl_price]

"Chemical rays of light"

 

What an interesting way to put it. Not light acting on chemistry but "Chemical rays of light". Now, those of you who have read your Herschel know that Light in the blue-violet wavelength range of the spectrum affected daguerreotype plates singly-sensitized with iodide more and sooner than light of other colors (wavelengths). The light rays toward the violet end of the spectrum which had this greater intensity of photographic effect were referred to as the CHEMICAL RAYS of light.

 

 

What does this mean for users of panchromatic film? Proably not photography by definition. What about color film? Real photographers use daguerreotypes. Careful of your answer because definitions are fixed permanently and there will be a test.

 

 

Context folks. Perspective. Take a picture.

[maris_rusis]

When Sir John Herschel coined the term "photography" and gave it to the world on the 14th of March, 1839 I believe that he was trying to encapsulate its most fundamental qualities that distinguish it from other visual crafts/arts. And, because he was a highly disciplined scientist, I feel confident that he wanted his new word "photography" to have solid truth value. Already in 1839 there was a serious confusion of terminology about what to call the process. A popular contender was "heliography" (Greek helios "sun" and graphos) but research had already revealed that other light, not just sunlight, would work too. So "heliography" was out.

 

Niepce and Daguerre had proposed "physautographie" (literally "painting by nature herself") and "physautotype" (literally "copy by nature herself") before offering "phusalethotype" (literally "true copy from nature"). In fact their pictures could not be said to be paintings, copies, or unimpeachably true so their attemps at terminology did not prosper. I for one am glad the world was spared these cumbersome neologisms.

 

William Henry Fox Talbot also had a go at naming his version of the new process. He chose "calotype" (literally Greek kalos "beautiful" plus "type"). Beauty is unfortunately too vague a concept to satisfy scientific precision so "calotype" eventually faded from use.

 

As for attempts by the inventors Fox Talbot and Louis Daguerre to name their pictures Talbotypes and Daguerreotypes the lack of modesty is only exceeded by the lack of information content regarding the nature of the underlying process.

 

Sir John Herschel cut through all the confusion with the simple well defined word "photography" and I think the word with its original meaning and all its aesthetic, intellectual, and emotional connotations is still valuable today.

 

All languages evolve and the meanings of words shift but there is an important place for "rigid designators". This concept was proposed by the American philosopher Saul Kripke to describe words that have their meaning fixed by what they were invented to name. Words such as "dead", "empty", or "triangle" are rigid designators. Imagine the confusion if the meaning of "triangle" drifted to also include four sided figures. The same with "photography". When I want a word to refer solely to "the application of the chemical rays of light to the purpose of pictorial representation" but NOT to picture making by the use of electronically controlled printing engines what word do I now use?

 

Maybe it is time for another round of neologisms. Photo.net surely has the talent on board to do this.

[karl_price]

"When I want a word to refer solely to "the application of the chemical rays of light to the purpose of pictorial representation" but NOT to picture making by the use of electronically controlled printing engines what word do I now use?"

 

You would use "daguerreotype" unless you want to pull out the phrase "Chemical Rays of light".

 

I think you miss the point. The word chemical in that phrase is to distinguish from the "Luminous Rays of Light" which were at the red end of the spectrum. That's how light was described in 1839. It has nothing to do with the fact that electricity wasn't involved.

 

Lets update for what we know now about light and even film's current capabilities and rephrase as "the application of the visible spectrum of light to the purpose of pictorial representation"

 

Now what would you call it?

[pico_digoliardi]

Ellis Vener, we are really in tune. Thank you for the affirmation of the same.

 

I have truly enjoyed the posts in this particular thread, enlightened by the insight of some. It is late; so ends a very good day on this earth. Thank you all so very much.

 

It is heartening that most have chosen not to take the 'digital vs.' sucker bait, while other groups dwell therein for months. I take it as a measure of the sophistication (myself excepted) of the general constituency here.

 

So I shall lurk now, learning.

[Spearhead]

<i>The same with "photography".</I><p>

 

Not true at all. Photography is a technology. Technology always changes.

[pico_digoliardi]

"Not true at all. Photography is a technology. Technology always changes."

 

For some time I tried to think of a technology that could not change, and gave up.

 

Some technology takes a very long time to change, then can change dramatically overnight. Windpowered sail technology advanced very slowly over thousands of years until the Parafoil was invented in 1964. Think of that - something that could have been done in the very first years of sailing, or at least by the technological ancient Egyptians went undiscovered until recent histor, then exploded into the parasail, parachutes, spinaker designs. (Well, the Egyptians wouldn't have much use for the parachute...)

 

All it takes is perseverance, insight, some special gift.

[terribletomterrific]

Hi Pico,

 

I like what you say. " ....photography is unique by its fundamental place in the

moment . . ."

 

For me, this quote captures what is unique in photography, and what I choose

to stress in my own photography.

 

Painting, drawing, and sculpture take place over time, over many moments.

And, I do acknowledge, to a limited extent, so does traditional photography;

but this does not trump the essence of photography: the timing, the moment,

the instant, the snapping of the shutter. No other art does this.

 

Best

Tomasino

[ben conover]

Root signifiers of photography........I think a photographic memory would be very useful but I don't have one, so a camera helps. Memory is the signifier, the moment is the photo.

 

The moment is an odd thing, sometimes it seems to last longer sometimes shorter. With a photograph we can see that moment as we remember it and as it appears to be in the photo, different.

 

Cheers.